The Stranger
by Naic
Summary: A short fic about what goes on inside Sam's head as the brothers drive their car on through the night. Some things hinted at, very obscurely though!


_**The Stranger**_

_The stranger is a creature of mythical proportions always moving among us but never a part of our world. This is the essence of the Winchester brothers. This is who and what they are. _

Sam's forehead is pressed against the car window, his breath mists, creating an opaque circle on the glass. He looks out at the landscape rolling past, tall firs stretching all the way up into the dark night sky. Ground covered in a thick blanket of pristine snow which glitters in the moonlight.

The brothers have been driving all day and well into the night. They started on the plains, red dirt stains on the Impala, mesas dominating the horizon. Now mountains and dark green trees surround them on all sides; sky black as oil above.

The car is warm, a protective womb surrounding them, shielding them from the night. Dean is humming in tune with the Led Zeppelin song blasting out from the speakers. Tap tapping his fingers on the wheel. Sam smiles unwillingly to himself, Dean is happy when he drives, all the worry which normally crease his forehead gone. Sam likes him this way, Dean lost in the black band of road stretching from here to eternity.

He looks down at the news clips in his lap; ragged edges from where he has torn them out of local newspapers. He has read them so many times on the way and now he knows them by hearth. The hunt has all the hallmarks of a werewolf, they can handle that.

"Just salt and burn the mother fucker," as Dean had told him, grinning wildly over a mouthful of fries. Sam had tried to tell him that salt and burn was really only viable for ghost and a couple of other things but Dean had just grinned wider, little pieces of potato stuck between his teeth and Sam had given up with a shrug, smiling back and for a moment blinded by the sun.

Sam leans back at the window and pulls his jacket tighter around him, shoulders hunched up to his ears and hands showed down into his pockets. He looks at the reflections in the glass, like a parallel world stretching hazy out into nothingness. He sees spirit Dean driving; a half smile on his lips as the road, smooth and perfect, unfolds in front of them. Spirit Sam looking at Sam looking back.

Sam wonders what the place they are going to will be like, what they will find, who they will meet. If the motel will have cable and if the vending machine will have anything decent for sale. But there are still many hours left between here and there.

Dean doesn't say but Sam knows he likes to drive at night, no other cars, just them and the sound of the roaring engine and tires rolling over flat asphalt. For Dean it is never about the goal but always about the journey; the highway. This is somewhat hard for Sam to explain for others, he has tried on occasions, mostly when drunk, but all he ever gets is blank stares. Surely the point of traveling is the destination? Their eyes tell him.

Sam has thought about this since he returned, from the time when his brother with hands, smiles and force had pulled him back to his old ways. In their transient lives there had always been too much time for Sam to think. Endless hours sitting on the leather seat in the backseat of the car or spent in a never ending string of new motel rooms. He supposes that was why he had studied so hard; less time to think.

People believe traveling is about going somewhere and eventually coming home. It is not possible for them to understand what it is like to not have a place to call your own. Most people have homes. They might be unhappy places, places that you can't wait to get away from, but they are still homes. People move across the country or fly around the globe but for everyone there is always a place in the world that they can point towards and say –that place right there, that's my home, that place is where I come from. It is easy to overlook a home when you have one; it is such an essential part of being human that we sometimes forget it's even there. Sam had always envied people that particular brand of innocence.

They live in a space which Sam imagines is like a state of detachment from every given point in space or any place at all; it is sort of the opposite of attachment, of the feeling of belonging somewhere. And here Sam supposes it becomes a bit metaphysical but he doesn't care. A wanderer without a home is free floating, never fixed to any point in time or space. When moving among people he and his brother were always the strangers. Close by, in the midst of them, but always separated, always on the outside. They can never be them and this is the element that makes them what they are.

Sam had always been that, the stranger. After all, Sam had never had a home. They had left theirs when he was still in the cradle, too young to understand, too old not to feel like he was missing something. As an adult he had tried so hard to create a home; left hunting, gone to Stanford and out of dreams he had built his castle.

Sam could still remember how much he had wanted to be normal, to be safe; with a force so strong it had scared his family. That wish had driven him into the biggest fight of his life. So he had left. Though in the end his new life had been taken from him before he had a chance to learn what it really felt like to have a proper home. His castle had been made from whishes.

It was clear to him now though; strangers they had to be, constantly moving away, never staying. That was why people told them things, confided their deepest secrets and the things they hid from the ones they shared their lives with. To strangers who move on you can tell these things. In the eyes of a stranger all is forgiven and everything is new.

To be a stranger, Sam supposes, can be defined as being free, you are not bound by ties that cloud your perception, understanding or assessment of the situation. This freedom condemns you to always be on the outside, to never belong. It is the curse of the strangers that they can never know home.

In the dark of the night Sam shakes from his reveries and looks at Dean's apparition in the window as it stretches out and changes the cassette. In the moment of silence Sam can see Dean looking over at him, smiling. A content feeling spreads inside him. This car is Dean's home, Sam thinks, the point that anchors him to the world, the one thing he can always come back to; which is why he loves it so much.

Above them the moon is out, a perfect disk shedding its silver light over the landscape. It's a night of dreams and hopes, where time seems to stretch out forever –it's a night of recalling who we are.

Now Sam knows who he is and also where he comes from. The earliest thing Sam remembers from his childhood is Dean. All his early memories are filled with his brother: taking care of him, smiling at him, holding his hand and hugging him at night when the nightmares came. Dean would never admit this today, but Sam remembers everything.

But that was then and now is now. Maybe he didn't want to come back to this life at start, but now he knows that this is who he is, what he was always meant to be. As strangers they are near and far at the same time, always there among the people they are protecting but never at home among them. If they would ever stay, strangeness would stay with them and that is why they must always move on.

Sam and Dean move among the regular people they meet, unseen except for when that world and the parallel world of the brothers congregate. In this meeting, when strange and normal become one, the laws of nature are repelled. Normal men and women get a glimpse of the supernatural, of the strange.

The people they meet, the ones they save, can continue their lives because as he and his brother leaves so does the shadows. The horrible things that hide in the dark are passed away and forgotten because they take them with them. And this Sam thinks is why they never stop, as long as they keep moving they can carry these things, if they were ever to stop the shadows would catch up with them. So they carry on.

As the strangers they are people still looked at them and see Dean's cheeky smile and Sam's earnest appearance and they trust them –bonds of humanity connecting them. But then he and his brother were so unlike them. Sam had never met anyone who fit into him like Dean, like a perfect, bright shadow of himself, and he never would. This fact is what holds the brothers together; to everyone else they are odd, ill fitting strangers. Sam had always stood on the outside, but beside him Dean had always stood, shoulder to shoulder.

Sam's current life suited him he supposed, like the embrace of a lover long known. That other life, experienced for such a short time had never him after all, it didn't matter how much he had wanted it. He _is_ the stranger now, always moving, never staying.

Sam closes his eyes and let the night wash over him and slowly he drifts off to sleep, head leaning against the window and shoulders falling down as his muscles relax. The brothers drive on through the dark in a piece of the world that belongs just to them. Dean's presence only a foot away, Sam sleeps as the world rolls past outside the car, as normal people have dinner, watch TV and go to bed. He sleeps content, for even a stranger can choose to share his alienation. He sleeps, because for Sam –Dean is home.

-The End-

_Please review; it is what gives me the courage to continue =)._

_This story is partly inspired by the essay: "The Stranger" by Georg Simmel from 1908._


End file.
